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“Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

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Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#41

Post by Keverw »

Interesting, didn't know HBO was going to be doing online only shows now like Netflix, Apple and Amazon.

Snowcrash is the book that inspired Philip to create Second Life. Then he moved on to create High Fidelity, but they are now pivoting more for virtual meetings and business use it looks. One thing I kinda don't like about the new virtual worlds, they are disconnected spaces while Second Life tried to have a sense of continued space, but never seemed to get as popular as Facebook and a region can't hold more than 100 avatars at once but even 50 is a limit in some places.

I feel SL was early for it's time though, they started working on it in the late 90s and opened in 2003. High Fidelity seemed more focus on HMDs then keyboard and mouse but I feel that is still a bit early too but it's an interesting space. I have some ideas on my own too I've been thinking about exploring, but still a lot to learn and then getting funding at some point when a more solid plan.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#42

Post by cronopios »

slg wrote: post #27
Pfhreak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book is a lot of fun, but it's also not a sacred text. It's a story about a pizza delivery driver who will be murdered if he delivers pizza too late and is also a hacker getting bound up in a story of Sumerian brain programmers run amok. (And somehow these brain programmers also can infect someone's blood?) For all of its foresight, the book is goofy and dated as hell. If it's going to come to screen there's no w…

Any book that names is hero/protagonist Hiro Protagonist doesn't take itself too seriously. I think both the producers of this adaptation and the fans would be well served to do the same.

And don't forget that the female lead character is Yours Truly!

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#43

Post by ryanSrich »

I support any network taking on more Sci Fi. I'd give almost anything to see a proper Foundation series done by HBO. Or culture series, or a Dune series, or you name it. Imagine a gritty interpretation of Fire Upon The Deep done by Christopher Nolan. There's not nearly enough Sci Fi movies.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#44

Post by omarhaneef »

While Snow Crash is one of the all time great sci fi novels, it famously has a huge plot hole: although Stephenson saw a lot of things about the future with remarkable accuracy, he did not foresee the ubiquity of the cell phone. A simple cell phone would have undercut the main plot.

Now that we know what we know, how will they account for it?

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#45

Post by munk-a »

ggm wrote: post #12

Watch them ruin it.

I'm looking forward to it being a critical success and then to watch them search for other works by the author to videoize and either grab Cryptonomicon or, even better, the Baroque Cycle...

Actually, Seveneves would be a kind of amazing long running serial if they just ran a chunk of anthologies during the portion of history the book skips between stabilizing the asteroid and recolonizing earth.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#47

Post by ethbro »

ryanSrich wrote: post #43

I support any network taking on more Sci Fi. I'd give almost anything to see a proper Foundation series done by HBO. Or culture series, or a Dune series, or you name it. Imagine a gritty interpretation of Fire Upon The Deep done by Christopher Nolan. There's not nearly enough Sci Fi movies.

You just described my dream reality. Please give me the metaverse coordinates of your Earth, now!

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#48

Post by andybak »

jacquesm wrote: post #15
andybak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Westworld also had several references to Jaynes. They fitted perfectly. Damn that series was good.

If you liked the series you should definitely track down the original movie with Yul Brynner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(film)

I'm very familiar with that movie - it was on TV fairly regularly when I was younger. My partner has watched the new series - I wonder what she'd think of the original movie...

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#49

Post by aasasd »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #2

This book featured adversarial inputs to the human neural network long before deep learning was cool.

Epileptic seizures can be triggered, that's the only actual adversarial attack on the human neural network that I'm aware of that actually works, and is more common than you might think: https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-epilepsy

We just don't yet know enough about the low-level workings of the brain.

Apart from psychological manipulation, of course―as already noted in another comment.

Re: “Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers

#50

Post by hwbehrens »

schoen wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epileptic seizures can be triggered, that's the only actual adversarial attack on the human neural network that I'm aware of that actually works, and is more common than you might think: https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-epilepsy

You could say that all perceptual illusions are adversarial inputs for the human senses. They're just not damaging ones. In a lot of adversarial input stuff for AI, you're trying to get the AI to misclassify something, not necessarily to damage the AI or even change its learning at all. In Snow Crash the perceptions were definitely damaging to the perceivers, but I don't think you have to go nearly that far to have a…

I once read a piece of text whose contents was so vividly horrific that it caused me to momentarily pass out, falling out of my chair. Granted, it passed through an intermediate representation in my brain, but I would still count it as an adversarial input to my vision that caused lasting damage.

The damage in Snow Crash just happened to be more severe than "short-term distress followed by periodic unsettlement".

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